Alachua County confronts its racist past

Wednesday

Digging through archives leads to clues of lynchings as part of effort to document and atone for a history of racist violence against blacks.

A cadre of volunteers has spent years deciphering handwritten Alachua County Commission meeting minutes dating from 1845 and transferring them to type.

It was like deciphering code — the writing was in the cursive style of the day, which has differences from modern cursive, which itself is becoming a lost art in the digital age.

But the 37,146 pages of history may help today’s commissioners come to terms with the racial injustices of the county’s past.

Those meeting minutes may provide answers that advance the county goal of atoning for a racist history that lingers today in the high rate of black arrest and imprisonment, educational and health disparities and low home ownership, among other measures of inequity.

That racist history includes the unlawful “extrajudicial” killing of at least 46 residents in the county.

Those lynchings were the most extreme acts in a system of racial violence and oppression that experts say was used across the South by whites to maintain power and privilege.

“We want to draw a pretty bright line around county government and then take responsibility for what we did or did not do,” commission Chairman Robert Hutchinson said. “It’s deep historical research. A lot of it means going back into a lot of records, but fortunately through an amazing volunteer effort, all minutes have been digitized so they can be word searched.”

The county plans to hire an equity officer whose job will include the research. Soon, a website on the subject will be launched. It will eventually have all of the records and documentation that is compiled.

Communities are undertaking such truth and reconciliation projects in conjunction with the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. They were created by the Equal Justice Initiative.

The memorial includes steel monuments for each county in which lynchings occurred. Counties can bring home their monuments, which include the names of known lynching victims, through the projects.

Cities are also participating and Newberry has embraced it more than any other in Alachua County.

The county recently held a memorial service for the lynching victims and more events are planned. But the drive to uncover its complicity and acknowledge its responsibility goes beyond ceremonies.

The county has documented at least 46 lynchings, though more were likely. The research continues.

Included are the Newberry Six, who were killed in 1916 following an accusation of stolen pigs. Others were lynched in Newberry at different times — at least 15 in all.

Gainesville had 11 documented lynchings and another nine happened in Newnansville, the former county seat that was north of Alachua.

Among those killed was an unidentified boy in 1892 in Waldo. His age was not known.

Jim Powell, who oversees ancient archives for the county Clerk of the Court office, said none of the county commission meeting minutes mention lynching. But payments for coroner inquests point to deaths that can be tied to lynchings.

Powell said he found no language of overt racial practices in the minutes he has seen. In fact, until about 1919, official records such as marriage licenses did not denote race. What changed?

“I’m thinking it was the first World War and the world got smaller — things came into the county from outside,” Powell said. “Radio and stuff like that brought other cultures into the county.”

But lynching was happening in Alachua County long before World War I.

The earliest killings found in the research were in 1867. Four men were lynched that year: George Bibbon and Cooley Johnson in Newnansville, Jacob Lee near Wacahoota and Harry Simonton in Micanopy.

George Buddington was the last man for whom an account of his killing could be found. He died in 1926 in Waldo.

Most were men but the Newberry Six included Mary Dennis and Stella Young.

Some of the lynchings were mob rule: “Taken by mob on way to jail” was a frequent entry in the research notes.

The lynching of a man named Eli by burning involved famed Wild West outlaw John Wesley Hardin.

Henry Hinson was hanged in Micanopy’s town square on allegations he murdered a man after a tightrope-walking performance.

Henry White was lynched in a woman’s yard in Campville after he was found under the bed of a white woman. He was hanged but the noose broke, so he was shot.

Most were black but the list includes four whites. One, W.M. Lucy, was a Jewish merchant who was shot in the eye.

The list was compiled by Karen Kirkman, a historian and president of the Historic Haile Homestead.

Kirkman collected accounts of the lynchings from varied sources including the Equal Justice Initiative and newspaper archives including Chronicling America, a website of the Library of Congress.

“You’ll see gaps in all of them. It’s pretty frustrating. Some stuff was a little hit or miss,” Kirkman said. “Some (lynchings) could have been in the local paper, but we just don’t have a copy.”

Yet accounts of lynchings in Alachua County appeared in newspapers elsewhere including North Carolina and South Carolina, including one that ran a day after the lynching.

The county’s next phase — ferreting out the ways the county was complicit in discrimination — may be just as difficult to pin down.

For example, roads and other facilities were built with inmate labor, Hutchinson said. Blacks were much more likely to be unjustly jailed and imprisoned.

The county wants to learn how it discriminated against blacks in employment and how segregation in health care at the former county-owned Alachua General Hospital affected the treatment of blacks.

Land-use records will be scrutinized to try to learn if blacks were cheated out of their property.

Kirkman said the minutes do include information that will be helpful, citing as an example contracts between the county and companies for the use of inmate labor. But names will be difficult to come by.

Hutchinson said if individuals can be identified and descendants are in the county now, some sort of reparations may be made.

“Let’s get all of the truth part out there. Then there is reconciliation at the other end. In between is reparations,” Hutchinson said. “We want to be the best example of a government being introspective about our own role in what we did or did not do.”